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An unexpected result was obtained from the recently recovered bones of Richard III, the anointed king of England until he was killed by an invading army under Henry Tudor. It seems that his Y chromosome doesn’t match those of his family. This could be a “false paternity” finding or it could be a run-of-the-mill lab error.

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Genealogy is getting a boost from DNA analysis, which both sparks interest and helps people to know where to look.

The genes that build America makes some good points, some of them not obvious. One is that black Americans who are descended from slaves depend on white families keeping and allowing them access to records, since their family histories are found in wills and bills of sale.

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I found an interesting Web site that describes the kinds of rope, its history, and how it is made. Two-strand rope may have been invented more than 17,000 years ago. The Egyptians built tools for making rope. In the Middle Ages, “laid” or twisted rope used to be made in long sheds called “rope walks” up to 300 yards long, thus giving rise to the “cable length” of rope. Three-strand rope is “hawser-laid” or plain rope, while four-strand rope is “cable-laid.”

Ropes can be twisted or braided. A plaited rope is made of braided strands twisted together. Brait rope is a combination of braided and plaited.

A cable is made up of three or more ropes twisted together. A rope made for a special purpose is called a line. Read “Ropes” at Solar Navigator.

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Pop quiz: The scientist who discovered that pasteurizing milk prevented it from transmitting diseases was told that if it were important, someone else would have discovered it already. What sex was the scientist?

It was an exceptionally stubborn microbiologist named Alice Catherine Evans who was the first scientist in the United States to definitively show that microbes in unpasteurized milk can sicken humans as well as animals. She went on to fight for the heat-treating of milk to protect the public and stands today as the mother of pasteurization in the United States. And the male heroes embodied in De Kruif’s book were hardly supportive. She was mocked, belittled and assured that if she was right, “someone much more outstanding” would have made the discovery long before.

De Kruif included her [in Men against Death] to both acknowledge her contribution and protest her treatment. “Such,” he noted sadly, “is the silliness of scientists.”

Still, by the time his book was published, Evans had won her battle to such an extent that she had already been elected president of the Society of American Bacteriologists—a forerunner of the Society of Microbiologists—in 1928. And she had done that with significant support from male colleagues, willing to “honor one woman whose findings dramatically advanced their field of research and improved public health in this country,” wrote Maryland biologist and former National Science Foundation director Rita Colwell in a much later tribute of her own.

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On the occasion of Turing’s would-have-been-100th birthday, researchers don’t think that he committed suicide. Rather, they believe that his death occurred when an electroplating experiment went wrong or chemicals were accidentally transferred to his food.

Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland… believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict. …a coroner these days would demand evidence of pre-meditation before announcing a verdict of suicide, yet nothing in the accounts of Turing’s last days suggest he was in anything but a cheerful mood.

Turing was a mathematical genius and codebreaker who contributed to Britain’s success in World War II.

Researchers working at Stonehenge have concluded, after ten years of archaeological investigation at the site, that it was built as a monument to unify the peoples of Britain after a long period of conflict and regional differences. The researchers theorize that the stones symbolize the ancestors…

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The Out Campaign

“Atheism is a religion like 'not collecting stamps' is a hobby.”
―Penn Jillette“If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color” ―Mark Schnitzius"If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!" —Clark Adams